Agricultural History Review, Volume 47 Part 1 (1999), pp. 1–6

Ridge and furrow remains a visible surviving feature of the medieval landscape but outside of the Midland Plain some aspects of the practice are not clearly understood. It is the distribution of ridge and furrow in such an area, in this case East Anglia, that is considered here. Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire retain relatively few examples of ridge and furrow. There is an uneven distribution across the three counties, despite the fact that during the medieval period, open-field agriculture was ubiquitous. It is argued that in the post-medieval period the majority of former open-field land was cross-ploughed and underdrained after enclosure, a practice that removed ridging ahnost completely. It is concluded that the pattern of post-medieval arable cultivation in East Anglia has largely determined the mid-twentieth century distribution of ridge and furrow, and that the extent of ridged fields in the medieval period was more widespread than has been hitherto imagined. 

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